LP "Expert Call" with Josh Clemente from Levels

Ben Gilbert (0:00)

Hello, LPs. We got awesome feedback on the recent special episode we did in the main feed with Levels founder, Josh Clemente. So we asked if he could join us for a special quote unquote LP expert call for us, for the April LP call. It was so great. Josh is awesome. Big thank you to him and to the whole Levels team for making it happen.

Ordinarily, we released these recordings just on the LP Google Drive, but because it was so good, we wanted to release the audio of this one in the feed itself, somewhere people will find and listen to it. Because it was a live LP call, there's no formal intro or outro. We just get right into it in the recording, which is why I'm here now telling you what's going on.

So with that, we will hit play on the recording, and we hope you all enjoy. How's it going, everybody?

David Rosenthal (1:04)

Hey, Josh. Thanks for doing this.

Josh Clemente (1:07)

Yeah, I'm excited.

Ben Gilbert (1:09)

Great to have you back.

Josh Clemente (1:11)

Yeah. Hopefully with fewer internet issues this time around.

David Rosenthal (1:15)

As someone said on our last LP call, which had no topic and no special guest, great to see everyone here for the Levels all hands.

Josh Clemente (1:28)

More and more every week, we've got a quorum here.

David Rosenthal (1:33)

Well, I have some warm up questions for you. If you want to dive in, will people trickle in?

Josh Clemente (1:38)

Totally.

David Rosenthal (1:40)

All right. So the first one is, what are some foods that have shocked you in being very reactive for you? That people may not assume would be?

Josh Clemente (1:54)

Well, the classic, which people may have already heard of by now, but I was blown away by is, well, there are two that fall in this category, but oatmeal is a big one. So a lot of people assume that that's such a boring, kind of painful to eat breakfast for many of us, and you do it because it's heart healthy.

It's like crazy, crazy glucose fuel. So I think last time we did an analysis data set, which is a very long time ago, 75% of people blasted into the borderline diabetic zone after eating oatmeal, even just plain. And then you add the maple syrup and you add the brown sugar and it gets worse. And then the other one, which was like the staple of my diet before CGM was brown rice, because it's the low glycemic rice. And so I would just build a layer of brown rice on my plate and then add everything else on top of that. And that was every meal I would eat.

And ultimately, that was probably, that was I think why things were so bad for me meal-wise was just, it was always based on brown rice. And so I then switched to sweet potatoes.

Ben Gilbert (3:00)

You could have gotten another few years at SpaceX in if you hadn't had all that.

SPEAKER_4 (3:03)

Yeah, exactly.

Josh Clemente (3:05)

It's like a half pound of rice and then something on the side. That was my lunch and dinner. And then sweet potatoes are another one that, you know, you just like constantly hear about how good they are and they taste too delicious, in my opinion, to be good. So that was like less confusing to me.

But yeah, those three, it was just like one after the other, it kind of puts the bro science. You go into any gym and like, people are going to say eat chicken, broccoli and sweet potatoes or brown rice, like all day, every day. And I just, yeah, I saw the negative effects of overdoing that.

Ben Gilbert (3:36)

Okay, so we would have a follow up question. What about the flip side?

Are there foods that are absolutely delicious that people think are terrible for you that are actually not bad?

Josh Clemente (3:46)

Yeah, cheesecake.

Ben Gilbert (3:48)

Ooh, really?

Josh Clemente (3:49)

So I can't say that because cheesecake is such a varied product, you can pick one of these up in a box or you can like make a quality cheesecake. I can't say this universally, but cheesecake for me is a total success. Like I have had a number of homemade and even a couple like restaurant versions. And because it's just, it's kind of like a dense, high protein and fat dairy product basically with added sugar and depending on what the crust is, but that's like my go-to dessert if I'm out because it's far better than a standard cake.

And yeah, Ms. is noting the like the corollary to cheesecake, which is the frozen version ice cream is another that people tend to be surprised by that is like pretty balanced.